[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 72 (Friday, June 5, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1042-E1043]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


 REMEMBERING THE LIFE AND COMMITMENT OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY ON THE 30TH 
                        ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, June 5, 1998

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me in paying 
tribute to the memory of one of our Nation's most compassionate and 
principled leaders--Robert Francis Kennedy, who was assassinated thirty 
years ago today. He served our country as Attorney General and United 
States Senator, but his legacy cannot be measured by mere titles and 
offices; rather, his greatness can only be understood by understanding 
the uncompromising morality of his political philosophy, his devotion 
to the most downtrodden in our society, and the intellectual eloquence 
of his efforts to communicate their needs to the rest of the American 
community.
  Robert F. Kennedy believed that one person, standing alone and guided 
only by the courage of his or her convictions, could move metaphorical 
mountains. His inspirational words to the oppressed black people of 
South Africa, spoken 32 years ago today, capture this spirit. They 
apply not just to those who were fighting against the brutal racism of 
apartheid, but to all of us. These words apply in particular to the 
life of Robert F. Kennedy.

       Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but 
     each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and 
     in the total of all those acts will be written the history of 
     this generation. * * * It is from numberless diverse acts of 
     courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a 
     man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of 
     others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny 
     ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million 
     different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a 
     current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of 
     oppression and resistance.

  Robert F. Kennedy rode the crest of an immense wave, serving as the 
nucleus of so many great progressive causes that marked the 1960's and 
helped mold a more just society, one less encumbered by bigotry, 
poverty, and apathy. His numerous lofty causes reflected these high 
ideals.
  Senator Kennedy fought for civil rights with a moral intensity rarely 
matched by the most legendary of noble crusaders. During his visit to 
South Africa, a land fractured by the scourge of apartheid, he 
addressed the most controversial questions with the absolute certainty 
of a man driven by the righteous rectitude of his cause. When asked at 
the University of Witwatersrand to respond to charges that blacks were 
too barbarous to be entrusted with power, he replied: ``It was not the 
black man of Africa who invented and used poison gas and the atomic 
bomb, who sent six million men and women and children to the gas 
ovens.'' He condemned the race-baiting leaders of South Africa to their 
faces, leaving no doubt about the moral degeneracy of their policies.
  Robert F. Kennedy's quest for human rights was felt most strongly by 
his own countrymen. As Attorney General, he did not hesitate to stare 
down Southern governors who attempted to curry favor with the Ku Klux 
Klan

[[Page E1043]]

by denying justice and opportunity to minorities. He sent federal 
marshals to integrate the University of Alabama, the University of 
Mississippi and other public institutions, withstanding vicious 
personal attacks against him in order to break down centuries-old 
barriers of hatred. As a United States Senator, he worked diligently to 
pass a wide array of civil rights legislation, including the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965. And as a presidential candidate in 1968, he uttered 
the following words to a crowd of black men and women in Indianapolis 
as he informed them of the tragic death of Rev. Martin Luther King, 
Jr.:

       What we need in the United States is not division; what we 
     need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the 
     United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and 
     wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of 
     justice toward those who will suffer within our country, 
     whether they be white or they be black.

  These were the words of a man who had known great pain after the 
assassination of his brother, but had overcome his hatreds to strive 
for a greater cause. His words touched the audience and helped to ease 
their immense pain at the loss of their leader.
  Senator Kennedy's devotion to America's underprivileged extended to 
those whose problems were economic as well as social. He spoke with 
sharecroppers in Mississippi, hungry families in Appalachia, 
dispossessed Indian youths on the reservations, and migrant workers in 
California. He listened rather than preached to them, grasping their 
pain and fighting with them to ease it. Kennedy understood their 
longing for self-sufficiency, not government handouts. He campaigned 
tirelessly to provide a platform from which they could rise above their 
hellish circumstances: investment in impoverished cities and towns, 
comprehensive welfare reform (decades ahead of its time), strong 
advocacy for the expansion of educational opportunity, and the 
implementation and enforcement of labor laws to protect abused workers 
and, especially, exploited children.
  Kennedy believed most passionately in the need to provide a better 
society for these young people: on the opening page of his 1967 book 
``To Seek A Newer World,'' he quoted the French intellectual Albert 
Camus: ``Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in 
which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured 
children. And if you don't help us, who in the world can help us do 
this?'' Kennedy's disgust at the mistreatment of children is most 
movingly shown by the story of a trip to a migrant worker camp in 
upstate New York in 1967. The noted historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, 
Jr., recorded an account of this visit in his biography ``Robert 
Kennedy And His Times.''

       * * * The owner's sign warned: ANYONE ENTERING OR 
     TRESPASSING WITHOUT MY PERMISSION WILL BE SHOT IF CAUGHT. 
     This discouraged most of the party. Kennedy, head down, kept 
     walking. He found three migrant families living in an old bus 
     with the seats ripped out. Inside he saw six small children, 
     their bodies covered with running sores. The stench was 
     overpowering * * *. Cardboard covered the windows of the next 
     bus, where a child played forlornly on a filthy mattress. 
     `As Kennedy looked down at the child,' reported Jack 
     Newfield, `his hands and his head trembled in rage. He 
     seemed like a man going through an exorcism.' The owner, 
     as billed, had a gun. `You had no right to go in there,' 
     he said. . . . Kennedy replied in a whisper, `You are 
     something out of the 19th century. I wouldn't let an 
     animal live in those buses. . . .'' Once back in the 
     twentieth century, Kennedy demanded that [New York 
     Governor Nelson] Rockefeller investigate health conditions 
     in the camps and called on labor leaders to organize the 
     migrants.''

  Mr. Speaker, we will never know for certain the impact that Robert 
Kennedy might have had upon our country as President of the United 
States, but I believe it fair to speculate that fewer children would 
live in abandoned buses today if his boundless compassion and his 
energetic commitment had become a driving force behind our government.
  This love of children was the source of his desire to improve the 
quality of our nation's schools. I once had the privilege of working 
with him on this all-important issue. As a young professor of economics 
and as a member of the Millbrae, California, school board, I was 
invited by Senator Kennedy's Committee to testify on the merits of the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Senator Kennedy's inciteful 
questioning reflected an unencumbered devotion to ensuring that all 
children, regardless of their race, ethnicity, geographic or economic 
circumstances, had access to a top-notch education that would prepare 
them to access unlimited opportunities.
  Senator Kennedy's feelings for young people also led him to his 
principled stand against the Vietnam War. A committed anti-Communist 
whose belief in civil liberties mandated his abhorrence of collectivist 
oppression, Robert Kennedy was a key participant in the dealings with 
Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro during the Cuban Missile Crisis. By 
the mid-1960's, however, he realized that the Johnson Administration's 
Vietnam policy would do little to curb Communism despite its sacrifice 
of thousands and thousands of young American men. Kennedy did not shy 
away from communicating his deep emotions regarding this loss. He once 
said:

       Our brave young men are dying in the swamps of Southeast 
     Asia. Which of them might have written a poem? Which of them 
     might have cured cancer? Which of them might have played in a 
     World Series or given us the gift of laughter from the stage 
     or helped build a bridge of a university? Which of them would 
     have taught a child to read? It is our responsibility to let 
     these men live. * * * It is indecent if they die because of 
     the empty vanity of their country.

  Kennedy loved his country and all of its people, but he was not 
afraid to be unpopular if it meant doing what he felt was right.
  Mr. Speaker, Robert F. Kennedy's life was cut short by an assassin's 
bullet 30 years ago today, and with his passing America lost one of its 
most brilliant and compassionate leaders. Many of his gifts, however, 
live on to this day. His invaluable contributions to civil rights, 
economic justice, and a moral and principled foreign policy will not be 
erased from our consciousness. Robert F. Kennedy's children have 
followed their father's example by their commitment to public service, 
and I am proud to have worked for the last twelve years with his oldest 
son, Rep. Joseph Kennedy, Jr., a dear friend and tireless advocate for 
human rights and the underprivileged.
  I invite my colleagues to join me in remembering Robert F. Kennedy. I 
pray that we all let his moral courage guide our public service, and 
that we ensure that his lessons will never be forgotten.

                          ____________________